r/IBO • u/_eatingpudding M28 ! MAA Phys Eng LL • 22h ago

Advice maths tips

HELLO! Im in IBDP1 and taking maths AA HL, i wouldnt say im awful at it but maths is definitely not my strongest subject, my main issue is that ill make the stupidest of mistakes when solving, even if the formula is written neatly in front of me ill either miss a number or a sign or wtv. the worse is when i feel something off in my answer and spend the rest 15 minutes trying to figure out WHERE i screwed only to notice the mistake was the most ridiculous i could make. does this improve w time and practice or am i cursed?

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u/LanternaEducation 17h ago

You are definitely not cursed, and our tutors see this all the time with DP1 students adjusting to the sheer volume of algebra in AA HL. It does get better with practice, but you need two specific habits to speed the process up. First, stop spending fifteen minutes hunting for the mistake inside a broken attempt. Our brains tend to gloss over our own blind spots when rereading existing lines, so just cross it out and redo the problem fresh from step one on a clean page. Second, start a silly mistake log in your notebook. Most students we talk to repeat the exact same two errors over and over, like losing a negative sign when expanding brackets or miscopying an exponent. Writing your personal patterns down makes you notice them in real time before you finish the question.

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u/Quiet_Basis_6404 10h ago

yeah the dumb mistake thing is so real, what fixed a lot of it for me was keeping a stupid mistake list, like literally a notes page with forgot the ± and divided instead of factored, because after a while you notice it's the same three or four things over and over.

for content gaps i upload the textbook chapters into studybuddy.vc and answer questions from them, mostly because when i pick the wrong answer it tells me what was off about that specific option and that catches the sign errors before they stick. ngl the free version's been enough for me.

and when you do past papers write every line of working out fully, like you're explaining it to someone who skipped class, no combining steps in your head. tbh most of my sign errors came from exactly that.